What gives? What gives way? The sky gives way and -d-r-e-n-ch-e-s- me. This is the rain again, and its runny messages, runny the same way as upwellings from the body.

What is a body? The answer to this question is too often misunderstood. It is assuredly not a person's physical manifestation. It is unclear how anyone could have a manifestation whose aspects were not physical, no matter how sublime or transcendent they might be. Crackpot dualism has cost too many people too much. How many sweet divinities have strangled in the last thousand years, on that vile concoction, and how many of those might have offered us help today when we direly need it?

So at any rate, it is not simply a matter of isolating a manifestation and determining which aspects of it are physical. For one thing, physical objects smear together like unblotted ink. For another, in anyone's manifestation there are physical aspects that are clearly not part of the body. Seamother manifests in the sea and the moon, and likely moisture-laden air, but it doesn't make any sense to call that her body. I myself am abuzz with entities, some personified, some not, who attend to me and my body the way courtiers might carry a train. Well, after saying what the body is not, I don't feel much like saying what it is. I know humans are very obsessed with their bodies. Obsessed without realizing it, perhaps--always spreading things across their skins.